Orcs
''From an interview with the orc adventurer Crackling Tusks for the Greyhawk Broadsheet-'' "We believe we were created by the great she-spirit Womb-of-Darkness, and she gave us the last spec of Oerth that no race had yet claimed--the caves and surface darkness. The dwarves had been given the mountains and deep-caves, the elves the forest, the fields to humans and halflings, and the gnomes had already taken the hills after leaving the dwarves. The underdark had yet to be taken by the outcast elves, but it was home to horrors and aberrations. All that was left was caves, and even they were already home to cunning great beasts and the roads of deadly monsters to the surface. She knew that only the strong could survive, and that the weak need be left to perish, lest they drag us with them. Gods often demand great deeds and works and faith from their creations. Womb-of-Darkness demanded the greatest task of us--survival. She did not care how, and she had no desire for towering golden idols or dedicated grottos or vast empires. All she cared for was that her children prove worthy of her effort in a world were the very plane was against them. We're still here so far, so I hope she's proud. When you're an orc, you live as if a soldier under perpetual siege. There may not be an elven spear or dwarven hammer for leagues, but there may as well be. The fertile fields, bountiful seas, rich mountains and verdant forests are all held tightly by the old races, with not a spit of arable land for a single orc tribe. I don't know what you all do with all that land, but it must be great indeed that my tribe cannot settle down on a single acre and scratch a living from the dust that doesn't require starvation and blood and choking down meat full of maggots the scavengers wouldn't even touch. We came to the banquet of Oerth, and found only crumbs. ...and even those crumbs were taken from us. The dwarves came and saw our meagre plates, they grabbed them from our clinging hands, licked them clean, then told the other races that they'd had a plate towering with food, but we came along and took it, burning it instead of eating it, leaving them nothing but bare plates to show. All because the dwarves found the caves, and our crude ironwork, and in their avarice wanted even that. The shame of the orcs is that we lost to an army of miners who only occasionally fight. Hm? What do I mean occasionally? Bah. Every orc fights. Fighting is the orc way of life--from the brood pits to the grave, an orc fights for everything. In birth we fight the spectre of death, and when we die, it's because we've been killed in battle. There are no orcs who die of old age. Any orc who feels that end coming goes and picks a fight, whether they can win or not, whether they can stand or must drag themselves with their arms, an orc goes down fighting. You pink-skins have this cute concept of "non-combatants," children and women and elders who somehow don't have to fight, but yet still get fed. Orcs don't have this concept. The old, sick, young, even women bellies swollen with young, are all expected to hold a sword or hammer or ax or spear as best they can when the tribe is attacked. We may not send them on raids, but then, a raiding party is neither every able-bodied male orc. If an entire tribe raids a village, it's because they were traveling nearby and were desperate for food or medicine or saw a poorly defended chance to stop wandering, to settle for just a moment, and live like you soft pink-skins. To survive without having to tear survival from the grave every morning. An orc tribe that is attacked is an army in waiting. Every member of the tribe who is present will pick up a weapon and fight. Even pitlings who crawled from their mother's womb two minutes prior will not suffer to be put down by some cruel adventurer's sword without doing their damnedest to take at least one finger with them. They will all--how was it one of your skalds put it? Ah yes- they will not "go quiet into that good night." They will rage against the death of the light of survival, even as that light burns the eyes from our skulls. Whenever some new Corelleon-to-be gets it in his ear to wipe us from Oerth, he will have to FIGHT FOR IT, GRUUMSH DAMN HIM! Hrmm... apologies. Hm? Oh, Gruumsh. Yes, he exists, no he did not create us. Is that what the crazy bastard is saying these days? rmmm... he was a berserker, centuries or more ago, it's hard to keep track. He found truth in another pink-skin saying--"The best defense is a good offense." One night when he was blind with drink-rage, he started arguing with his chief again--likely as drunk as he was--about a belief he'd held his whole life--that the orcs should take the mantle of predator and fight the elves for territory, steal the forests from them, even if we had to burn them down. Gruumsh was drunk, and he did what so many berserkers are constantly advised against doing by their tribe's shamans--he challenged his chief. Make no mistake--shamans don't caution against this because they believe the berserkers are weak, no, they fear the berserkers too strong. A berserker chief would in all likelihood take his tribe into a war that would send them all to the warrior's burial pit--an affront to the gift Womb-of-Darkness gave us. Unfortunately, Womb-in-Darkness' law is clear, and final... a chief has very few options for declining a challenge without suffering dishonor, or insulting the orc who issued the challenge. The most common way for the chief to do so is to declare that the challenge would negatively impact a larger struggle, and to postpone it. The tribe had just finished a raid, and were in a time of glut. There was no larger challenge (other than survival, but few chiefs are clever enough to cite this), and he was too drink-dumb to think of an alternative. He took the challenge, and the mad Gruumsh won. Decisively. He then, soon after, passed out from his drink. When he awoke, he, and his tribe, found himself the new chief, with no options for either, only the consequence of suffering for his foolishness. He spent a good while in the chief tent. He called for shamans, women, and more booze. Ultimately, he decided to use his new power to make orkind realize he'd been right all along--that the rightful role for orkind was to shake the elves from their safe forests or burn them all in the failing. Clearly, he failed in both counts. But he brought enough orcs under his banner--even, or especially, after he'd lost his eye--that he became a new god. Precise timing is uncertain at this point, and the fact that time is more akin to a vague suggestion for the gods makes it even harder to know for certain, but it's believed that Gruumsh at this point, desperate to show himself right, signed a pact with Iuz, the mad half-fiend of human birth who made himself a god, that led to his ascension. This goes to explain the fact that so many orcs live in the Pomarj, and march under Iuz' banner. Even orcs who march under the banners of other would-be dark lords can be easily understood. Yes, understood. I take it you've lived an easy life, pink-skin. Yeah, well, go find some pink-child who's grown up knowing only the gutters and the boots of passersby. Offer them dinner every night, a bed, or even a safe space on a stone floor with furs to cover it, clothes to wear, and, most of all, power--power to be the passerby who kicks the cur in the street, and all they need do is kill who you tell them to. Watch them leap at that chance. Oh sure, they'll be hesitant at first, but as soon as they know you're honestly offering it, they'll leap at the chance faster than if you threw your pasty crust on the floor. This is what dark-lords offer orkind, add to it the blind eye of their masters when the orcs find some weak pink-skin woman to slake their other lusts upon, and you can now know why orcs so commonly ride under a dark-lord's sign. Yes, pink-skin. You recoil in horror. You claim that it's still barbaric, that my race is monstrous. But tell me--have you forgotten that when a pink-army conquers a village, there is a special term, warbrides, for the women who are taken as prizes? Do you forget that your vaunted paladins are known for putting orc and goblin and kobold children to the sword when they avenge a raid? Do you forget that you know when an orc-camp has been "dealt with" because you see a long smoke column curling into the sky in the direction from which the raids came? You pink-skins are no less villains than my brothers and sisters who kill and conquer for a nightly stew. You just write the history books and cast yourselves as the heroes. Hrmmm.... yeah. Print that. Sure. I know you won't. Yeah, yeah, editors... sure. Ha. Even if you did, no pink-skin reader would believe a word of it came from a 'greentusk.'"